Fusible interlining fabric



United States Patent U.S. 'Cl. 117-37 2 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A fusible interlining material suitable for backing the whole front of a jacket comprising a base fabric having high denier resilient fibers in the weft yarns and carrying spaced dots of a gelled vinyl chloride/vinyl acetate copolymer fusible at temperatures below 175 C.

This invention relates to interlining material for garment manufacture.

It is well known to produce a fusible interlining material, which is secured in position in a garment by the application of heat and pressure to fuse a coating of a thermoplastic substance carried on one face of the interlining material and thus cause the interlining material to become bonded to the garment fabric against which it is pressed. The most satisfactory type of interlining material normally employed in garment manufacture has a discontinuous coating of resin, formed by the application to a base fabric, which may be a woven or nonwoven fabric, of a randomly distributed solid granular thermoplastic resin, which is bonded to the base fabric by the subsequent application of heat, with pressure to affect compaction of the resin granules. However fusible interlining material of the above type has only been applied to quite small areas of a jacket for reinforcement purposes. Thus such interlining material has in practice only found acceptance for strengthening the edges of jacket pockets, strengthening lapels and similar small areas, and also in ratherlarger areas, such as chest and shoulder pieces.

Although the qualities of the above quoted interlining material are such as to make it acceptable as a reinforcement When bonded to relatively small areas of a jacket, the hardness of the granular resin and lack of uniformity of the resin coating have restritced its usefulness to the above indicated purposes.

More recently there have become available fusible interlining materials which utilise a light, but closely woven, base fabric, to which is applied a pattern of dots, formed of a soft plastisol composition. The softer nature of the resin dots, coupled with the pliability of the base fabric, has made it possible to apply this type of fusible interlining to largre areas of the facing fabric of a garment.

In the production of jackets the front of the jacket is provided with an interlining formed of a fabric usually referred to as the canvas. In conventional tailoring practice the canvas is used to line the whole of the front of the jacket and is secured in place by permanent stitching around the dege of the front of the jacket and, during making-up, is also secured to the front of the jacket at or near the side seam by basting, which is subsequently removed.

A canvas (when connected with the making up of jackets) is a generic term used for a complete interlining in the front of a jacket or coat.

In conventional tailoring practice a canvas of a garment is formed of:

(a) A haircloth or similar material which is shaped roughly in accordance with the front of the coat,

(b) A chest reinforcement of haircloth or similar material shaped to reinforce the chest area,

3,446,658 Patented May 27, 1969 (c) A shoulder reinforcement of felt or similar material shaped to reinforce the shoulder area,

(d) A lapel reinforcement of linen or silicia (a cotton-based fabric) or similar material shaped to reinforce the lapel area.

After sewing together of the above items or pieces which form the interlining of a coat, either by hand, by a Zig-Zag machine, or padding machine, the canvas is formed. The canvases are made up in pairs, i.e. One for each front of the coat.

The canvases are blocked to shape and contour on steam presses designed with a left and right side shape and contour.

The canvases are basted or sewn to the coat fronts by hand or machine with a long stitch (basting stitch) after the pockets have been sewn into the fronts.

The canvas now becomes the foundation of the garment. The canvas is designed to follow and create a desired silhouette or outline of the coat. The canvas is a reinforcement to the cloth front, required to prevent collapse or sag or distortion in any part of the coat front.

It has long been seen to be desirable to employ a fusible interlining material as a replacement for the canvas of a jacket, so that the necessity of inserting removable basting might be obviated.

However, when a fusible interlining material is employed as a replacement of a conventional canvas, it is not as an exact replica, in either shape or effect, of a conventional canvas aforementioned. The fusible interlining is cut exactly in accordance with the front of the coat shape except that the periphery of the canvas is cut to be inside the edge of the facing cloth.

The fusible interlining is attached to the coat front by a fusing operation, i.e. the coat fronts are laid upon the lower buck or table of a fusing press with the reverse side of the cloth uppermost. Next the fusible interlining is placed on the cloth with the resin side down. Fusing of the two pieces is then carried out under conditions appropriate to the resin coating, the nature of the coated interlining fabric and the facing fabric. The front of the jacket is now regarded as canvased.

The canvased front still requires the attachment of a loose chest assembly, which is intended to act as a shoulder and chest area reinforcement and comprises:

(a) A haircloth chest piece shaped to reinforce the chest area.

(b) a fusible fleece or felt shaped to reinforce the shoulder area.

(c) a fusible lapel stay or bridle shaped to reinforce the lapel area.

These parts :are analogous to the similar parts employed in the conventional tailoring practice referred to above, but again they have a greater shaping effect for their weight and other characteristics by reason of being bonded indirectly to the facing fabric.

A conventional canvas controls the front of the garment only indirectly. It hangs behind the front and acts as the support :on which the garment is built up and subsequently its presence behind the front of the jacket gives stability, but this is only achieved indirectly. Where the canvas material is fused to the facing 'fabric a quite different principle is used. The front of the jacket no longer consists of a facing cloth alone, but consists of a laminate. It is this laminate as a whole and not the facing cloth 'or the fusible interlining by itself which produces the desired effect. This effect is different from that obtained by a conventional canvas in that 'whilst the conventional canvas only supports the front, the fused canvas actually stabilises and controls the facing fabric which forms the entire front.

Although attempts have been made to utilise the known grades of fusible interlining, having a granular resin coating, to replace the haircloth of the conventional canvas, the resulting jackets were unsatisfactory, principally because the use of such known fusible interlining materials resulted in a jacket having a rather harsh handle. It was also found that the handle characteristics were found to vary over different areas of the front of the garment, depending upon the number of pressing operations to which that particular area was subjected during the course of manufacture and this was a particularly unsatisfactory feature. It was also found that in some cases small visible blisters could be observed in the facing cloth, where the interlining fabric was not fully fused to the facing cloth. Such blisters are believed to be due to differential shrinkage between the facing fabric and the interlining.

It is believed that at least some of these disadvantages arise from the fact that the granular resins used in the production of such interlining materials are necessarily rather hard to permit them to be successfully comminuted to produce granules. As a consequence the relatively hard resin granules can frequently be felt through the surface of the garment fabric and, by their nature, are rather rigid and thus produce a slight stiffening effect on the garment, particularly in the case where they are applied to a loosely woven canvas material. Where a loosely woven canvas is emplqyed the individual granules must be of rather large size so as to straddle the interstices of the fabric, to avoid strike back of the resin through the fabric when subjected to heat and pressure during the fusing of the interlining fabric to the facing or outer fabric of the front of the jacket. Strike back of the resin through the interlining fabric on which it is carried, leads to fouling of the hot platen or buck of the press by the resin and this cannot be tolerated.

The function of the canvas at the front of a jacket is to provide bulk and moulding to the front of the jacket without at the same time detracting from the normal characteristics of the facing fabric, so that it is essential that interlining material, bonded to the facing fabric, should not stiffen the facing fabric or impart any paper-like effects to it.

It has now been discovered that a jacket may be constructed with a fully fused front (that is to say with a canvas secured uniformly over its surface area to the facing fabric by means of a thermoplastic adhesive) providing the fusible interlining material employed in the canvas for bonding directly to the facing fabric has certain characteristics.

In conventional tailoring practice the fabric utilised in making up the canvas must itself have a certain degree of resilience, particularly in the weft direction, and it is therefore conventional to utilise fabrics which employ at least a proportion of yarns of a resilient nature, such as rayon, linen, hair or man-made fibres, such as nylon or terylene.

A fabric for use in the canvas of a jacket is preferably woven with resilient yarns in the weft, whilst the warp yarns are preferably cotton yarns, so that it can be moulded to shape by steam pressing and at the same time it will have sufficient, but not excessive bulk to prevent sagging or distortion in any part of the jacket front. In addition such a fabric will have suffi-cient resilience to retain the desired appearance of the entire jacket front in wear.

Such a canvas should possess high crease recovery. When measured by the Shirley Institute method the percentage recovery should not be less than 70% in the warp and 80% in the Weft. In general fabrics which are recognized to be suitable for employment in convases in jackets manufactured by conventional methods are suitable for the production of the novel fusible interlining materials of the present application. It is, however, found that, for use with a given facing fabric, a rather lighter base fusible interlining fabric should be employed than 4- would be required for the canvas where traditional methods of manufacture are employed.

Although, as stated, it was already known to produce an interlining material by printing plastisol dots onto a closely woven light cotton base fabric, it was not believed possible to utilise this production method to produce an interlining material suitable to replace the fabrics conventionally utilised in the production of the canvas of a jacket, of which the facing material is of a weight of 10 oz./sq. yard (339 gm./sq. metre) and upwards. It was believed to be impossible to produce a satisfactory material by printing plastisol dots onto the base fabric for a number of inter-acting reasons. In particular it was believed that the large interstices in the conventional canvas base fabric would lead to excessive strike back of the plastisol through the fabric during subsequent fusing to the facing fabric. It was further thought that rather large quantities of plastisol would be required for the printing process to plug the interstices to allow sufficient resin to be carried on the fabric as projecting dots for bonding to the facing fabric and the use of such large quantities of resin would be likely both to increase the impermissible strike back of the resin into the base fabric and of resin penetration into the facing fabric and as a consequence to lead to excessive stiffening of the front of the jacket. It will be understood that such resins would lead to stiffening in both the warp and weft directions of the interlining material.

It has now been found surprisingly that a fusible interlining material, suitable for employment in the canvas of a jacket, may be produced by the application to a fabric, having the general characteristics of a conventional canvas fabric, of a thermoplastic adhesive having characteristics of softness and flexibility and applied in a regular pattern of small dots of predetermined size and distribution provided that the application of such dots is effected in the manner hereinafter defined and the base fabric has been stabilised against shrinkage. Whilst it is undesirable to employ a base fabric having zero shrinkage, the shrinkage of the base fabric should be stabilised at a value of 0.5 to 3%, instead of the shrinkage values of 10% and upwards commonly encoutnered in canvas fabrics in the loom state.

In the production of a fusible interlining for use in the canvas of a jacket, the adhesive is applied in the form of a plastisol which will, after subsequent heat gelling, fuse at a temperature below that obtainable in commercially available garment presses. Thus for most purpose it is necessary that the plastisol should fuse at a temperature below 175 C., the temperature attainable in electric presses used in the garment industry. In other instances it is necessary for the plastisol to be softenable at a temperature below C. to permit the fusible interlining material to be secured to the facing fabric of a jacket by the use of the well-known Hoffman steam press. Plastisols which can be applied to the base fabric by a screen printing method, can be formed from fine particlesize copolymers of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate, in which the vinyl acetate contents is within the range of 5 to 15%. Such resins, after gelling during printing and subsequent bonding of the fusible canvas material to the facing fabric, exhibit satisfactory qualities of pliability and resistance to dry cleaning solvents.

According to the present invention, therefore, a fusible interlining for use in a canvas in jacket manufacture comprises a woven base fabric having a weight of 3-7 oz./sq.yd. (102438 gm./ sq. metre) and having its shrink characteristic stabilised to a value of 0.5-3% and having applied thereto spaced dots of a gelled plastisol which softens at a temperature below C., the individual dots having a diameter of 0.7 to 1.5 mm. and covering 7-30% of the surface of the fabric, the resin content of said plastisol being constituted by a polyvinylchloride/ polyvinyl acetate copolymer (incorporating from 5 to 15% of polyvinyl acetate) of a particle size finer than 60 microns, said pastisol being applied to the fabric in an amount of 0.7-2 oz./sq. yd. (24-68 gm./sq. metre) and in an amount of 12-50% of the Weight of the woven base fabric, the woven base fabric having the normal construction of a conventional canvas fabric and having at least a proportion of long staple, high denier resilient fibres in the weft yarns and having 25-45 weft yarns per inch (-18 weft yarns per cm.). Other shapes of dots, such as squares or rectangles may be employed in place of round dots, but would be of equivalent areas to the dots whose diameter is above set out.

Whereas the actual maximum temperature for softening the plastisol is given above, it may be said that if the plastisol dots carried on the base fabric, soften within -20 seconds, under a buck of an electric press held at 190 C., the plastisol has a satisfactory softening temperature.

Examples of the manufacture of a fusible interlining suitable for use in the canvas of a jacket manufactured from a facing fabric of the weights specified are given below:

Base fabric Example 1 Example 2 Example Wei ht:

%)zs./sq. yd 4. 75 6.9 4. 35 Gms./sq. In 162 200 147 Shrinkage, percent 1.0 1:0 0.7 0. 9 0. 9 1. 5 Construction:

Warp/weft yarns to in- 48/30 44/36 43/40 Warp/weft yarns to cm. 19/12 18/14 17/16 Yarn count: 1

Warp/weft cotton count..- 14s/12s 12s/l0s 14 s/l8 s Denier 380/ 443 443/532 380/295 Tex. (gm/km.) 42. 2/49.2 49.2/l5.5 42. 2/32.8 Cloth composition Warp Cotton Cotton Cotton Weft Spun rayon Resin coating composition Pol yvinylchloride/ polyvinyl aceta te copolymer (containing 10% of polyvinyl acetate) with a K value of 65, having a particle size finer than 60 microns dispersed in approximately equal amount of butyl benzyl phthalate plasticlser. Resin coating weight:

Ozs.s d 1.3 2.0 0.7 I q y 44 68 24 150 150 170 Per sq. cm 28 23 26 Dot coverage (percentage area of base fabric covered by dots) 17.9 17. 9 13.0

I Viscose scribbled rayon. 2 90% viscose rayon, 10% hair.

The plastisol adhesive was applied to the base fabric by means of a rotary screen printing apparatus in the pattern above specified.

Base fabric Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Suitable facing fabric... 12 oz. per 15 oz. (340 12 oz. as in linear yard g./sq. m.) of Example 1. 54 in. wide (271 grn./sq. worsted m.) of 55% suiting. 'lerylene and 45% wool suiting abric. Fusing conditions: C. for C. for 155 C. for Electrically heated 20 sees. 15 sees. 20 secs.

press at a pressure of 2.1lbs./sq. in. (0.15 kgJsq. om.) press buck temperature.

When these materials were incorporated into garments under the specified laminating (fusing) conditions no sign of delamination or differential shrinkage was discernible after the garments were dry cleaned commercially six times in perchlorethylene.

Laminates prepared from these materials under the specified laminating conditions with a wide range of suiting fabrics showed no visible evidence (blistering or bubbling) of differential shrinkage after immersion for 1 hour in cold water, followed by drying at 40 C.

I claim:

1. A fusible interlining for use as a canvas in garment manufacture comprising a woven base fabric having a weight of 3-7 oz./sq. yd. and having its shrinkage stabilised to a value of 0.53% and having applied thereto spaced dots of a gelled plastisol which softens at a temperature below C. the individual dots having a diameter of 0.7 to 1.5 mm. and covering 7-30% of the surface of the fabric, the resin content of said plastisol being constituted by polyvinylchloride/polyvinyl acetate copolymer containing 515% of polyvinyl acetate of a particle size finer than 60 microns, said plastisol being applied to the fabric in an amount of 0.7-2.0 oz./ sq. yd. and in an amount of 1250% of the weight of the woven base fabric, the woven base fabric having at least a proportion of long staple, high denier resilient fibres in the weft yarns and having 25-45 weft yarns per inch.

2. A fusible interlining according to claim 1, wherein the warp yarns of the base fabric are cotton and the weft yarns are composed of a major proportion of viscose rayon.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,383,263 5/1968 Storti 16197 X 3,257,262 6/1966 Epstein l61-89 3,098,235 7/1963 Gusman 161-148 2,497,045 2/ 1950 Killingsworth 260-33.6

ROBERT F. BURNETT, Primary Examiner. M. A. LIT-MAN, Assistant Examiner.

US. Cl. X.R.

l619l, 87, 148; l56276, 298, 300, 309 

